We can separate 2 main process happening here: the Ranking and the Conversion. The Ranking is the set of sub process happening before the user click on the SERP link. The Conversion happens after the website is shown to the user.
Ranking subprocesses, Before Click
Discovering
Crawling
Indexing
Ranking
Maintenance
Once an URL is in the index starts a consolidation process that depends on the competitor’s URL behavior.
To the four processes explained above, we added Maintenance, as we understand that every SERP position is temporary and can be beaten by SEO or SEO / SEM strategies at any time. Maintenance refers to the set of activities to keep or improve the current SERP position of the website (creating more content, for example). Remember that Attention through Content is the main Google Search goal.
Conversion subprocesses, After Click
At this moment the web page (notice that every page of the website will rank differently) is in the SERP, on the first 5 pages, hopefully, that means it is in the list of the top 50 websites that rank for the same keyword.
The “click next” button in SERP desktop view is every 10 links, and in mobile view is every 50 links.
The scroll of 50 links and more (ads, inserts, snippets, cards and stories) is already a tiring task, so we doubt a keyword can hold beyond that 50 links mark.
As you can understand the former concept of website design (the graphic design of a page that is hosted on the web) is not in play yet. It is only after the click on the SERP link when your website “really exists”.
The following factors are happening after the click, and with that user intervention Google gathers more information to rank your website. This second Conversion Subprocess is way more dynamic than the first, and it depends how the visitor interact with the website and if that visitor creates one or more conversions.
Performance
Accessibility
Best Practices
SEO
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
That is the summary of our simple version of the Google Ranking Factors in 2022 2023, two main processes that happen between a click.